This was brought up in conversation recently, so I had to repost. Tough.

"The details of my life are quite inconsequential.... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize; he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament... My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon... luge lessons... In the spring, we'd make meat helmets... When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds-pretty standard really. At the age of 12, I received my first scribe. At the age of 14, a Zoroastrian named Wilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum-it's quite breathtaking... I suggest you try it."

C'mon down, have some fun. There's no place else in 500 miles where you con have this kind of fun. Honest.See you Monday night. Signups start at 9pm, racing starts around 9:45ish. No entry fee. We'll be doing a bracket-style elimination starting this coming Monday the 31st.

Back at Charlie's we figure a half-hour of drinking is not enough, so after schlepping everything quietly up the staircase of amazing resonance Casey busts out a few discreetly hidden cans of Molson. Or Ranier. Really, they could have been Natty Ice, for all I know. Anyway, we continue drinking while getting the basic lowdown of the apartment rules ("the bathroom is through the single bedroom, so take care of whatever you need to do now"), the local scene, anything to know for the race (no secrets divulged), and bike polo.Now it's about 3am, and we retire. I wake up at about 4:30 to take a leak, so I (thought I) sneaked outside quietly to water the bushes. Back to the couch, and I awake a few hours later as Charlie walks into the living room."Um, so I'm in a bit of trouble, I guess." He says to me."Were we too loud or something?""No, I told you to go outside to pee...""Yeah, I'm cool with that,""Well, because of that I'm in trouble with Megan. So tonight just walk through the bedroom, OK?"Leaving the apartment we first cruised over to the Hammer Coffee where Megan works to get a little jump-start on the day (reallyreallyreally good coffee, by the way).Megan seemed to be more embarrassed than anything else as to our use of the yard as a toilet. Using one set of words, she managed to apologize to us and reprimand Charlie in the way that only a wife can do. Leaving the coffee shop, we agreed to use the bathroom.Breakfast left me wondering why it's so hard to get really, genuinely good food at a good price in Bozeman. For less than what one would spend for warmed-over mediocrity at IHOP I got the biggest and tastiest breakfast burrito I've ever had. C-note got the Huevos Rancheros which, as was described to us, "Made him feel like Luke Skywalker finding Han Solo." Seriously good food.So, we've got about six or so hours before the 4:30pm manifest handout time. We're in a city, we've got bikes, what is there to do? Well, we ride! I think we put on somewhere around twenty miles that morning and afternoon. We did manage to get a rough idea of the layout of town and we even managed to get some Thai food. Excellent Thai food. A mountain of pad thai with fried rice and a bowl of egg drop soup for $6.25. I couldn't finish it.Note to Bozeman restaurateurs: A person should be able to buy a tasty and filling lunch for less than $7.Finally, it's time to get to the race. We roll up right about at 4:30 and start milling about. Some Warlocks pull up and start taking money and handing out manifests and spoke cards. We've got an hour and a half? There's only nine stops? This is gonna be cake!Eventually almost 80 racers show up. All types, too.Drunk guy keeps asking C-note to borrow his map while a couple of transients stand aside with their brown bags in hand. Being the out-of-towners we get a bit of assistance from Megan and a few others, but the map C-note got turned out to be excellent, with numbered blocks and everything!GO!We take off, 80 bikes in different directions yet towards a common goal. The start is really my favorite part of an alleycat. It's so chaotic, so nerve-wracking yet it seems to work out smoothly. Except for the dolt that managed to right-hook Casey. No, not a guy in a car, a guy on a bike. Lucky for the Bianchi there was no damage.First stop comes quickly, with about 90 percent of the racers descending on a bar in the space of six or seven minutes. The pack splits up pretty quickly after that. Having to down a cup of beer will do that.My second stop is about six miles away, and I've got a good route there. In city you don't know anything about, you don't try to take shortcuts. I head south on a selection of two-and four-lane roads, settling into a nice rhythm. A few red lights popped up at inconvenient times but were disregarded as the road was clear.Second stop, the Little Dutch Goose, a very..."interesting" bar. Situated squarely in the middle of a residential area with schools and few businesses there's a bar with a muddy parking lot, lots of old American Iron parked there, and people (median age: 50) packing all 500 square feet of this place. I run in, much to the delight of some onlookers and look frantically for 'Kyle'. The bartender notices me and asks,"Can i get you something?""Uhh, I'mlookingforKyle..."And right then a late-20's guy with a messenger bag leans back from the bar, with an expression that very succinctly said,"WTF?"Manifest gets signed, then it's on to stop three, another four miles away.

So, we had RockySprints this Monday and we had, yet again, a solid turnout.

Now, it was nice to see the regular crowd bring it strong. I do have to say, however, this girl frikken threw down HARD, and she was just someone that happened to be in the bar. She raced four times and beat a few dudes (including her boyfriend). I don't think any guys raced that much.

When I picked C-Note up, he had a couple of snide remarks about our method of transportation to Boise."I thought your Subaru was a little rough around the edges, but this, THIS.....is it gonna make it?"That was comment one about Captain E's 1984 Toyota Camry. Rough is an understatement, admittedly. The windshield really does need to be replaced, but most of the cracks are on the passenger side. We have to be careful when loading the trunk, avoiding the hole on the side. That hole is comparable in size and shape to the hole in the muffler, giving the car a "throaty growl". Oh, and it's got over 300,000 miles.His concerns were unfounded. The car ran great, delivering around 30 miles per gallon for the duration of the trip. It was no problem to maintain 75-80 miles an hour.The second snarky comment was in reference to the studded snow tires. Now, one of the reasons we headed SOUTH was to get a brief respite from our 5-month winter, if only for a day. That seemed to be a good plan, and I was almost giddy anticipating sun, 50 degree temps, and maybe even see a little green grass.Twenty miles from Boise we hit snow. Wait, snow is usually light, airy, fluffy- even when it's a bit wet. This was borderline freezing rain, and a lot of it. Within seconds visibility dropped to about a hundred feet and what we could see of the road was glossy, shiny ice. Trying to pass a semi led the car into two inches of cake frosting. As good as the tires are, they were just not big enough and the car just not heavy enough to keep headed in a straight line. With mere miles to go, and text messages from Charlie telling us to hurry or we'll miss last call, we struggled through cascading ice from truck tires and rapidly diminishing visibility to make it in town at 1:35 AM.Rounding the corner, we see a shadowy figure standing next to a shiny fixed gear. Three items stand out: Tall cans of Budweiser. Yep, this is the right spot.A quick illegal u-turn followed by terse greetings and opening cans of beer lead to bikes quickly getting assembled to make last call.At the Neurolux we finally get a chance to talk (yell), C-Note gets to formally meet Charlie and we take advantage of the remaining twenty minutes to pound a couple shots of Maker's Mark and drink a pitcher of PBR. Ah....now I'm relaxed!The bar closes, and we head back to the apartment.

As some of you know, C-Note and I cruised down to Boise this past weekend for a little bit of alleycattin' (and a lot of driving and drinking, although not necessarily together). The Warlocks put on the third edition of their annual St. Patty's day Alleycat, Liverdance on Saturday evening.The adventure did not start there, though. We had our first-ever introductions with the Yellowstone Park Police at about hour 1.5 of our eight hour drive. Being followed for twenty minutes, I kept staying legal..I had my headlights on, went the speed limit, slowed down for snow and ice, didn't drink any beer.And then I saw the lights. We figured something was up, since we had passed about four other cars pulled over in those twenty minutes. I calmly pulled over, waited for the office to get out, and tried to stifle a laugh as the second cop has his Mag-lite on (it was about 6:30pm...still light). A very nervous officer asks for my ID and other stuff. He asks if we have any drugs (no), weapons(no), or alcohol(one growler of Bozone for a certain Ninja)."Can I see that bottle?" says the cop."Sure, here ya go," says me"WE GOT A BOTTLE OF ALCOHOL!!! WE GOT A BOTTLE OF ALCOHOL!!!!" not so calmly and very nervously says the cop.At this point I see six Park Police doors open (evidently we were pulled over by two cars) with five officers and one dog getting out.Calm cop asks, "You been drinking this beer?""Um, no...you can open it up and see that it's full if you want." I respond calmly.Nervous cop (cop #1) says that he pulled us over because "even though you were driving completely legally, and your lights were on, your license plate lights were out. And they have to be on.""Well, this is my friend's car. I'll tell him to fix that.""And your windshield is severely cracked as well,""OK, I'll tell him that too.""Would you mind stepping outside?""Uhhh...sure.?"We get out and stand shivering in the windy cold as calm cop explains that they've got a real problem with that road being a major drug corridor, "and your car looks a bit suspect."(An '84 Camry with no exhaust, 311k miles, ripped seats, and more cracks than windshield?)The response in my mind was, "Hm. I though Drug Dealers went into that particular profession so they can have nice things, like cars,"But my spoken response was, "Yeah, I don't blame ya. I'd pull that thing over."That seemed to take the edge off while the Drug Dog In Training went through the car and found only an open bag of Chex Mix.A few more minutes of us shivering while Calm Cop talked to us about triathlons and we were allowed to go.Until we got within 20 minutes of Boise, that was the only excitement.

I just got back from a 'networking' session at the 317 and while there I was informed that they have a band scheduled for this coming Monday, so there will be no RockySprints.Sorry.See you on the 24th!

Damn.Last night we had the first real night of RockySprints. And like Rocky Balboa defeating Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang, and Ivan Drago the bikes kept dishing out punishment to anyone foolhardy enough to ride them. About 20 people stepped up to the stage at 317 to get another dose of ass-kicking, including some random people at the bar. Glitches were mercifully minimal and everything seemed to work pretty well together. There's a few mods to be made, a few refinements and such, and we'll be back at 317 next Monday the 10th.

Big thanks to Wiley, Adam, C-Note, Paul, Steve, and Faunce. This wouldn't have gotten off the ground without ya's (as well as anyone my still-recovering brain has forgotten).

Sunday night, after hours of working around ever-increasing piles of empty PBR cans we finally have Rockysprints up and running. Adam, Seth M, and Wiley came by last night and helped get the last few details hammered out before running some full-speed tests. To be sure, there are some details to work out, and some issues we will have to work around but as things are right now it frikkin' works! And don't worry, both bikes will be identical fixed-gears.

I'll see you tonight at 317. 9pm.Tonight's races will be limited to one-on-one sprints, without much record-keeping. We'll keep track enough so that someone's got bragging rights, but I've got no prizes yet. Winners get to bask in the satisfaction of being the first Rockysprints champions.There's no cover. Sweet, huh?

Some of you regular readers know Maya.Unfortunately, she passed on early Friday morning.

Maya was one that helped to reinforce my propensity to trust and like dogs more than most people. In the six years we shared together we had traveled to hot springs, breweries, mountain bike trails, mountain peaks, lakes from Washington to Vermont, ski trips, and countless everyday mini adventures. I have not known a dog that conveyed more intelligence and feeling than her.

I have more to write but I can't seem to get the words through my fingers, so here's a few pictures.New World Gulch

The Bozeman Fix

The Bozeman fix is about bicycles in Bozeman, Montana. We like riding, racing, fixed gears, mountain bikes, alleycats, hardcourt bike polo, community, drinking beer, and all the good stuff that comes along with having bike love and leading the bike life.